Introduction

Summary

During the First World War, the experiences of German soldiers on the Western and Eastern Fronts seemed worlds apart. These separate worlds shaped distinct “front-experiences” (even for soldiers who fought on both fronts) which proved to have important consequences both during and after the war, testimony to the impact of war on culture. While all was “quiet on the Western Front,” a routine hell of mud, blood, and shell shock in the trenches, a different ordeal took shape for the millions of German troops in the East from 1914 to 1918. What they saw among largely unfamiliar lands and peoples, both at the front and in the vast occupied areas behind the lines, left durable impressions. These crucial first impressions in turn had profound consequences for how Germans viewed the lands and peoples of the East during the war itself and in the decades to come, until ultimately these ideas were harnessed and radicalized by the Nazis for their new order in Europe. In this sense, the eastern front-experience was a hidden legacy of the Great War. The failures of the First World War had vast consequences, for out of this real encounter over four years there grew a vision of the East which encouraged unreal and brutal ambitions.